Pink Stars are falling!

I’m writing this a little late, having seen the show at the beginning of the week, but I wanted some time to let this show sink in and to have a think about it.

I remember when the Stephen King book Under the Dome first came out, picking it up in a bookshop and thinking I’d have to get it when it came out in paperback. I never did but I think I will now since the concept is so fascinating. And I do enjoy seeing the differences between TV shows and the books they're based on. 

I actually first heard about the series because some colleagues were discussing it. My boss saw a taped copy, passed it onto someone else and they ended up enthusiastically discussing it over lunch several times. When I saw C5 was airing it, even though I'm not usually a fan of their output, I thought I'd give it a go.

It's definitely a show I'll be sticking with. I wasn't as instantly "OMG this is fantastic" as my colleagues, but hearing them chat about the first episode had spoiled a couple of the big setpiece moments so I was waiting for the cow chopped in half, the concertinaed truck and the exploding pacemaker. But it's still intreguing. I can already see that there's going to be a lot of interpersonal conflict that could lead to interesting places. And it looks like it will be quite dark. Junior Rennie and his dad "Big" Jim seem to be people to watch. And what will happen to the spark between Julia and Barbie when she finds out what he was doing pre-titles.

It was a bit gorer than I was expecting. They showed a lot more blood and nastiness, but I suppose you'd expect a few nasty injuries if I giant invisible dome suddenly dropped over a town. And they have to create some major excitement in the pilot to keep people coming back from the pilot.

And "the pink stars are falling. The pink stars are falling in lines". Stated by two characters I'm pretty sure have never met. What does that mean?

I guess I'll stay tuned to find out.

Doctor Who and the Daleks: Book Review

This is a cross-post from my Goodreads page. I know it's the second DW book I've reviewed in two days, but holidays and long train journeys give an excellent opportunity to read and these books are never terribly long. I promise it won't usually be such a regular occurance. 

Well, this is different. Most Target novelisations are direct adaptations of the script for the TV series. They might add in what a character thought to explain their motivations, include a scene that was in one of the original scripts but was cut for time, or fill in a plot hole, but in the main they are straight adaptations with little room for creativity from the author.

David Whitaker’s adaptation was, according to his Wikipedia page, based on Terry Nation’s original notes for the story. But the first 20% is completely different to what occurs in the episode (I have seen the serial several times, most recently towards the beginning of this year so I am pretty familiar with it). It would not have been out of place as the introductory episode of the series, except it is also different from the beginning of An Unearthly Child. Ian Chesterton is a bored school teacher who has just been rejected for a job at a science research centre. Lost on Barnes Common in the fog, he is stumbled upon by an injured Barbara Wright who has just come out of a car wreck. She is a bored secretary who has taken up tutoring a private pupil for extra cash. She was driving that student, Susan English (not Foreman?), home when their car crashed. They go back for the badly injured Susan, but are unable to find her. From there the story is familiar to people who have seen An Unearthly Child – they meet an old man who is suspiciously evasive and a locked, out-of-place Police Box, they fight their way inside to discover it is a space ship. There is anger, resentment and disbelief, and then acceptance of what has happened. Then the book finally gets into the same territory as the originally screened episode.

In another departure, the book is not written in the omniscient third person that is usual for the Target novelisations. Instead, everything is from the direct POV of Ian Chesterton. Things that he couldn’t have seen, like Susan’s trip back to the TARDIS for the medication necessary to save them from radiation poisoning, is relayed back to him by someone who was there. This change makes the most of the altered beginning, as we get Ian’s internal reactions to his situation and surroundings. We can read his thoughts as he moves from scepticism to belief at his being in a Time/Space machine and it is a delight to discover the marvels of the TARDIS through his eyes – the shower is definitely something I’d like to try out. I would have preferred less of the animosity that was shoehorned into the Ian/Barbara relationship and leads to a very obvious place at the book’s conclusion.

The other addition, not normally present in the Target books but found in my copy, were the illustrations. These line drawings correspond more to the TV series than the book – for example the first drawing Susan appears in shows her in the blouse and tight fitting cropped trousers of the TV show, rather than the bright jumper and ski trousers she’s described as wearing on the previous page. The drawings themselves are actually quite nice little sketches, though the artist clearly had some trouble with accurately rendering the faces.

All in all, this is a curious little piece, quite different from the normal Doctor Who novelisation, or even most TV tie-ins. This was written before Whitaker did any of his script writing for the actual series and may have been, in a way, an audition piece. An interesting little curiosity for fans of the series.

The Eight Doctors: Book Review

This is a cross-post from my Goodreads page and was the 62nd book I've read this year. I did say I read a lot, right?

I last read this book shortly after the Doctor Who TV movie was first released. A big fan and an impressionable tween, I read it with delight – simply happy that there was a new Who book out, featuring the rather attractive new doctor, that I hadn’t read yet, having devoured all the Target novelisations owned by my local library several years earlier.

Reading it now, sixteen year on, while I am still a fan, I can look at it more objectively. It’s still a fun romp through all of the Doctor’s seven previous incarnations. Only the First and Seventh Doctor meetings are brief. The others tend to either add flavour to the conclusion of a story (as in the Second Doctor meeting), or show a coda to the events of an adventure (as in the Third and Fourth Doctor meetings). There is a side plot of President Flavia watching procedures in confusion and facing a minor conspiracy on Gallifrey, and the Sixth Doctor gets a massive role when the Eighth interferes in his trial.

It’s Terrance Dicks at his best – rattling along nice and quick, fixing a few minor plot holes or adding reasonable explanations for phenomena seen in televised stories as he goes. The language is simple and easy to follow, Dicks always remembering that children might be reading. It did lead to some laughably tame language from a 1990’s drug dealer and his gang, chasing the girl who is to become the Eighth Doctor’s companion in the series of books that follows. My copy also had several glaring typos that a good proof reader should have picked up on.

A pleasant little Sunday afternoon read for a fan of the series. Each Doctor has his little moment, made all the more enjoyable as a retrospective on them in the show’s 50^th anniversary year.

Value Judgements

I'm on holiday visiting family at the moment and for the past few days I've been staying with my sister. I'm just dashing this off before I go to catch a train because I can't get it out of my head.

Last night one of my sister's friends came over for a quick cuppa. She watches Doctor Who and knowing I'm a fan, she asked what I thought of the new Doctor. When I said I thought he'd be really excellent, he was a talented actor, etc., she looked puzzled.

"Oh. But he'd not very attractive is he?"

I brushed it aside with a comment that, as a newly single woman I wouldn't turn him away (and I do think he is a fairly good looking older man) but it bothered me. Is this what the David Tennant and Matt Smith eras have done to the show in the eyes of casual viewers? Is it judged not on having the cream of British talent playing the lead roles, but on whether the Doctor is "sexy"?

And the Twelfth Doctor is . . .

Scottish!

That makes a quarter of the actors playing the Doctor Scottish. That makes me, as a proud Scots girl, a very happy lady. But that's not the only thing I'm taking from this.

Peter Capaldi.

An excellent actor. Best known for The Thick of It, as Malcom Tucker. So best known as a foul-mouthed spin doctor losely based on Alistair Campbell. Not the most obvious Doctor. But he's a very talented actor who's played a great many different parts. Besides The Thick of It, in the recent years I've seen him as a transexual suspect in Prime Suspect 3, a philandering painter in an early 1990s Poirot, King Charles I in The Devil's Whore, and an 1950s newsman in The Hour. That's a very ecclectic set of characters. And it doesn't include his two previous Whoverse appearances. 

He was patriarch Lucius Caecilius Iucundus in the Tenth Doctor adventure The Fires of Pompeii. He was also the hard-nosed civil servant John Frobisher in Torchwood: Children of Earth. So Whovians have already seen him in action.

He's a good choice. Simply by dint of his age and life experience he will be different to Matt Smith. He won't be able to help it. Which is good because if a new Doctor is too similar to the last there will always be more critical comparisons. There will be comparisons anyway, but if you can take the role and make it your own then people are more able to separate your differing portrayals. He is a mature and experienced actor, and a well-established name to close out the 50th anniversary year.

He's a good, solid choice. Some might say a safe choice, but there's really no such thing when you're casting the new Doctor. But I have no doubt he will do very well.

Now just to find out what John Hurt is up to... 

Doctor Who?

The actor who will be playing the Twelfth Doctor is going to be announced at 19:00 tonight in a live broadcast and I can't wait.

I am part of the Lost Generation of Whovians. Those born mid 1980s to lat 1990s, who didn't have their own Doctor. The long hiatus began when I was 4 and a little to young to watch a series that had become so very dark and the revivial didn't happen until I was 20 and at Uni. Okay we had the TV Movie, but that was one fresh showing that ended in the disappointment of no new series.

Some people think we were unlucky, and I do pity those of my generation who didn't find Who until the revival. But I had a dad who loved the Doctor, too. I sat on his lap aged 4 to watch Tom Baker's Ark in Space. At 8 he took me to a signing Colin Baker did in Glasgow as a surprise. Aged 9, my birthday present was tickets to a convention where I met Jon Pertwee (just 2 months before he died), Lis Sladen, and Colin again. The BBC were releasing new VHS tapes all the time, and UK Gold showed whole stories as omnibus edidtions on Saturday and Sunday mornings. There were the Target novelisations (my local library had a fantastic stock), Virgin's New Adventures and Missing Adventures, the Comics in DWM, Big Finish audios, and audio recordings of the episodes wiped from the BBC archives. I could watch any and all of the eight Doctors, all 32 companions, any time I wanted.

Which means I don't have a favourite Doctor. My favourite is the one I'm watching at the time. I try to choose, but then I remember a fantastic episode someone else did, or a brilliantly performed speech by someone else and I change my mind again. So here's my opinion of all eleven actors who've played the Doctor so far.

William Hartnell

We can never thank him enough. He made the Doctor. He wasn't always the nicest incarnation. He could be harsh, cruel, selfish. Out for himself and to hell with everyone else. But there was a twinkle to him. He adored Susan. Her exit was harsh and his will, not hers. But he did it out of love, and a sense of what was best for her, not him. He may have had little time for adults, especially young men, but he cared for young people. And he could not stand tyrany. 

Patrick Troughton

The clown. But a clever clown. That impish exterior was what he used to hide his formidable brain. By capering around and playing the fool, he tricked people into underestimating him. He could play the hero just as well when it was required. And he saved the series. If things hadn't gone so well after he took over, the show would have died in 1966.

Jon Pertwee

Perhaps my favourite Doctor when I was small. His stories were classic and action packed - the James Bond of the Doctors. He was irascible and could be rude and condescending, but he was also a gentleman. His farewell to Jo Grant may have been the most moving moment of the series to date. He was a lovely man, and I feel privilaged to have met him. 

Tom Baker

Tom Baker spent the longest time (on-screen) as the Doctor and so his episodes and seasons could be hit-and-miss, and that's how I feel about him. There are so many classic serials from his time, but he also had some right clangers. And part of that was down to the man himself. He came to think of himself AS the Doctor, and not Tom playing the Doctor. While all the actors who have ever played the Doctor have put some of themselves into the character, no one else ever became the Doctor like him. And it went straight to his ego. Some of the clowning around in later years was a detriment to the shows and doesn't refelect well on him. But he also loved the part so very much and he so wanted to protect the children watching. And that could never reflect badly on him.

Peter Davison

The good young man. Davison was a breath of fresh air after the wildness of the fourth Doctor's era. Gentle and kind, he abhored violence, but always seemed to get caught up in it. He was the old head on young shoulders and willing to do anything for his friends - even die.

Colin Baker

The trauma of his regeneration made him unpredictable and unstable at first. He was pompus, arrogant and as selfish as his first incarnation, but there was also a riteous anger there. His "corrupt" speech from Trial of a Timelord is a masterpiece of outraged eloquence. Listening to his Big Finish work, it's clear that Baker's performance was hampered by poor writing and restrictions placed on the show by the BBC. He didn't have the chance to shine that he should and he has always been horribly underrated.

Sylvester McCoy

The first Scottish Doctor would always have a place in my heart, but he perfectly combined charm with a Machiavellian deviousness. You never could tell what his real plan was, behind a cloak of misdirection, clowning around and a willingness to lie to his friends. It would have been easy for fans in the early 90s to have blamed McCoy for the show's cancellation. That this is not generally the case is testiment to the fact that he was a superb Doctor with great hidden depths.

Paul McGann

Like Colin Baker, Paul McGann was never given a chance on screen. I loved him as an eleven year old, and in my late 20s I would give my right arm to see him portray the Doctor on-screen again. He had a vulnerability that hadn't been seen in the Doctor since the Fifth Doctor. Again, it's his Big Finish performances where he has been given a chance to properly make his mark on the role and he brings a humour and charm to the Doctor that are much needed given the dark times he goes through.

Christopher Ecclestone

Only a serious, well-respected actor could have made people sit up and take notice of the revived Doctor Who and Chris was perfect. Able to play the seriously traumatised man that Russell T. Davies had in mind, he was also able to play for laughs in the way that the Doctor always has. It is that fine line that every actor since Patrick Troughton has had to walk - the serious heroism that makes a child trust the Doctor will make everything better, with the comedy that makes him less of an authoritarian figure and more like one of them. Chris did that beautifully.

David Tennant

I have loved David Tennant since He Knew He Was Right (a period drama I'm sure many people have forgotten). He brought a joy and an energy to the role with what I call "skidding-to-a-halt", but could play the darkness, as the Doctor descended into dispair and egotism after losing Donna. He was hampered by some not brilliant writing at times, and I was never a fan of the Doctor/Rose love thing, but he carried the series over what could have been a difficult hump - the first regeneration after the revival.

Matt Smith

I think Matt may be my favourite of the 21st century Doctors. His portrayal is a wonderful blend of Troughton (Fishfingers and custard) and McCoy (Didn't anyone ever tell you? There's one thing you never put in a trap — if you're smart, if you value your continued existence, if you have any plans about seeing tomorrow — there's one thing you never — ever, put in a trap. … Me.) 

So, there you have it. Whoever plays the twelfth Doctor has big shoes to fill. I hope he (or she) is up for it...

Welcome

So, a blog.

It does seem the best solution to a small problem I have. I am a geek. A massive geek. I geek out over many, many things. The problem being, I know very few people who are as geeky as me. And no one who geeks out over all the same things as me. Except my ex-husband.

One of my biggest geekdoms is Doctor Who. I am not one of these Jessie-Come-Latelys who has only watched since the revival in 2005, or worse since David Tennant took over (because he's so HAWT!). I remember watching my first episode of Who when I was 4 in 1989 (it was Tom Baker's Ark in Space) and I attended my first signing (Colin Baker) when I was 8. 

The announcement being made tonight about who will play the twelfth Doctor has made me realise that, since my separation, there aren't many people I can geek out over the announcement with. My sister was very bemused when I told her I couldn't call tonight because of the announcement. My best friend is also a geek but doesn't have a TV license so she can't watch live like me. 

So - the internet. There are always people on the internet who are willing to discuss, debate, argue over, or share news, thoughts, ideas and feelings on any topic. So to the internet I hop. I don't expect many people to read this blog, but anyone who does is welcome to comment. I want to engage with people. So don't hold back.